Azmil Arash began his indie games development career in 2019 after the inspiration for an idea that he believed could be a big hit. Armed with a passion for creating games, his thinking behind the decision was a simple one: whether it became a hobby or the foundation of a full-time career, either way, it would be a worthwhile experience.
With much hard work and dedication, the latter has become Azmil’s reality following the launch of Smashgrounds.io under the Malaysian-based AZ Game brand in 2020. Achieving success on the first attempt, however, was not without its challenges.
As many indie developers have come to understand, launching a great game is just the first step in finding long-lasting success in the game development industry. Game creators must find ways to monetize their games successfully to survive and thrive. As is often the case, Azmil experienced monetization issues on the release of his crazy 3D battleground game for iOS and Android.
Ad campaign funding did not produce the desired return on investment (ROI) initially. This was clear from the disappointingly low eCPM (effective cost per thousand
impressions) it was receiving. In layman’s terms, the ad performance metric indicated poor earnings from the money invested. There are several reasons why this can occur. The most common is an ad network’s unsuitability to a game’s target audience and the lack of competition between networks for game traffic. Azmil’s initial efforts to monetize utilized a platform configured to one underperforming ad network. As
results went on to prove, Smashgrounds.io would never realize its true revenue potential with this setup.
After much research, Azmil turned to Mijiba’s Managed Ad Service (MAS) to introduce multiple ad networks and increase competition. MAS would give Smashgrounds.io access to multiple top-performing ad networks and automatically insert the highest bidding ad at the optimum injection point.
To Azmil’s surprise, integrating the MAS SDK was also a
lot easier than he had imagined. “There were far fewer steps to complete compared with other ad mediation providers,” Azmil observed. “And the fast and helpful response from the MAS team was, in fact, one of the things I most enjoyed about working with Mijiba!”
AZ Games had never achieved more than $5,000 in revenue prior to implementing MAS. Now it is earning +$7,000 per month. This represents a 30%-50% increase in eCPM, achieved by applying the right solution with regular monitoring and tweaking from day one.
Consistency in revenue earnings has given Azmil the means to turn his passion into a full-time career. Starting as a solo developer, he can now think about enlisting the help of a small team of people. With a reliable partner in place to help monetize all his future games, new hyper-casual game
projects are on the horizon.
It is not uncommon for first-time game developers to experience low levels of eCPM on their initial attempts to monetize. But this is an issue that is easily overcome when aligned with an experienced ad mediation partner like Mijiba’s MAS.
If you are an indie developer with a great game that’s experiencing poor performance in ad monetization, go to our MAS Portal to register and set up MAS for your game in just three easy steps, or book an appointment with a Games Growth Specialist here to learn more.
